goods116 *** SPOILERS *** I liked the first half of this movie, bolstered by an excellent cast of Hackman, Reed and Bergen. The initial set up is a good one: Hackman chasing down Reed and his kidnapped wife by using his long range sniper rifle to gun down Reed and his crew. The first couple of encounters are strong. Of course Bergan falls for Reed. But then that's it. That's pretty much the whole plot. Hackman guns down everyone. No showdown, no interesting shootouts, no twists, no surprise ending, nothing. For Hackman, 70s/genre fans only.

chris-outhouse I watched this film and kept watching it because of my faith in the main actors. They did not let me down. They are terrific and so are those in supporting roles. But they are working with a flawed story and a flawed script. Three quarters way through, the film starts to drag as basically the same thing keeps happening with predictable symmetry. Reed's companions die off and Hackman's leave him. Hackman and Reed are what the story is about and the hangers on, stuck to each of them, become an irrelevance to be got rid of by the script writers so that the story can reach its climax and conclusion. The fundamental flaw in the story is the barely, if at all, discussed willingness of Hackman's hunting party to go after the kidnappers rather than the animal prey. These are rich, "respectable" pillars of society - not the criminals, murderers or dubious posse characters often depicted in such a manhunt in westerns. That does not make them honourable or give them a conscience but they would think twice, big time, if invited to go on a lynching rather than a planned animal hunt. The ending would have been much more interesting if Reed had used his ingenuity to counter Hackman's long range technology ; if he had thought up an ingenious plan to attack his pursuers, and give Hackman (and us) more of a run for his money than just run, fade away into deep sand.

zardoz-13 Violence escalated in Hollywood movies by the late 1960s with the shoot-out in "Bonnie & Clyde" and later the bloodbath that celebrated masculinity gone berserk in Sam Peckinpah's seminal masterpiece "The Wild Bunch." Presumably, this must have inspired Jules Levy and Arthur Gardner, well known for their family oriented television series "The Rifleman," to produce this riveting western shoot'em. When you consider the wealth of talent that went into this western lensed mainly on the plains of Spain, you have to wonder how such a project could have suffered so badly with critics and audiences alike. Scenarists William Norton of "Brannigan," Gilbert Ralston of "Willard," and Lou Morheim of "The Last Blitzkrieg" definitely put their best pens forward. No sooner has illiterate outlaw Frank Calder (Oliver Reed of "The Three Musketeers") kidnapped a gorgeous woman, Melissa Ruger (Candice Bergen of "Soldier Blue"), so she can teach him how to read than the woman's hypocritical husband (Gene Hackman) pursues them with a vengeance. The husband is no ordinary individual. He is cattle baron Brandt Ruger, and he has just bought some Sharps rifles that can blast a man from twice the distance of a Winchester repeating rifle. Brandt is basically a sadist with a trophy wife and possessive streak a mile wide. Once he learns that his wife has been abducted, Brandt fears the worst. He hates the idea that Melissa will be raped and impregnated with an illegitimate child. The suggestion that Brandt might be impotent aroused my suspicions. He doesn't want to get stuck with raising a bastard. All of this occurs after Ruger has launched a hunting party with several prominent friends and a train-load of prostitutes. He decides to chase Calder and company, but he isn't so much concerned with rescuing Melissa as he is with blasting all to kingdom come. That Brandt is a sadist is clear from the outset. Director Don Medford establishes this characteristic brilliantly in the first few minutes when he cross-cuts shots of Calder and his gang carving up one of Brandt's steers with Brandt reaming Melissa out in their bedroom. Ironically, Melissa finds more compassion in the veteran outlaw.Ingeniously, "The Hunting Party" scrutinizes masculinity under-fire in what initially struck me as a mindless massacre but is far more substantial than I imagined. Ruger relishes the chance to kill Calder and his cutthroats with extreme prejudice. Calder and his men are taken aback to begin with because they cannot see their adversaries sniping away at them. Not long afterward, the gang turns on each other. By this time, in a riff on The Stockholm Syndrone, Melissa and Calder develop a mutually supportive relationship, and Brandt is predictably infuriated when his worst fears are confirmed by dying outlaw Hog Warren (L.Q. Jones of "The Wild Bunch")who Brandt stabs to death in the throat. Medford doesn't rely on exploding blood squibs. They smear blood all over their victims. By the time that Ruger and his companions have begun to whittle down the outlaws, "The Hunting Party" generates far more depth than its deceptively gratuitous violence suggests. The ending is particularly audacious. Ruger is so consumed with hate that he consigns himself to death by traipsing into the desert to kill both Calder and Melissa. The performances are exception and the line-up of western character actors who play Calder's gang is second to none. Oliver Reed delivers another stunning performance; Reed was incapable of giving a bad performance. Sadly, this rugged British actor never received the recognition that his distinguished colleagues got in the form of knight-ships! Hackman rivaled him. After the first hour, you'll wonder why the outlaws neglect to lure the hunters into an ambush and kill them. Particularly incredible is the hero who disarms himself because he had to put his best friend out of his misery after having been shot by Ruger's men. When I first saw it I loved the violence, then I turned against it later because I treated it like a derivative western with little to set it apart from other gory oaters. Now, I consider it a maligned, misunderstood horse opera that defied narrative and genre expectations. Challenging and interesting, "The Hunting Party" had more on its plate than even Peckinpah's masterpiece.

Michael_Elliott Hunting Party, The (1971) * (out of 4) This Western is pretty much forgotten by everyone except for fans of violence and gore, which this thing has plenty of. The story centers on a bandit (Oliver Reed) who kidnaps a teacher (Candice Bergen) so that she can teach him to read but her sadistic husband (Gene Hackman) is worried about her being raped and bringing home a bastard child so he and his friends form a hunting party and using their long-ranged rifles go after the men. THE HUNTING PARTY isn't the worst Western I've ever seen but I'm quite certain it's the dumbest. The film's reputation for violence and gore starts off with the first shot where we see a live cow get stabbed a couple times and from this point on one more body is hitting the ground every few minutes. The film was clearly influenced by THE WILD BUNCH as most of the violence happens in slow motion and each bullet hole has a ton of blood coming out of it. One of the more memorable scenes of violence has a guy getting shot through the guy, which violently turns his head around, which we then see the back of it getting blown off. Other forms of violence includes Reed's group getting just about every body part shot at least once. If you're completely turned off by gore then there's really no point in you watching this film because everything else is pure bad. Considering the cast it's somewhat shocking to see such trash but I'm guessing they signed up expecting the end product to be something more meaningful. One of the dumbest sequences in the film has Reed raping Bergen and then threatening not to let her eat again until she agrees to teach him to read. A few scenes later the woman is slowly cracking from not eating so Reed and a buddy decide to eat peaches in front of her. This sequence seems like it was written for a Laurel and Hardy film as it's comic in tone with the men slurping up the peaches, making funny faces at Bergen and even the music score is done in a playful manner. Out of no where Bergen cracks up laughing and it's as if she's forgotten all about getting raped and she's on a picnic with friends. The subplot deals with Hackman being a sadistic scumbag and of course it turns out that Bergen prefers to be with Reed. None of this works because the film can never make up its mind in what it wants to do other than show violence. Even worse is that Reed's group are constantly being stalked by Hackman's clan and I'm guessing this was meant to be intense stuff. The tracking and stalking just comes across boring and if the director's was trying to go for some sort of psychological drama then he failed. Reed has no problem playing the crazy guy with a good heart but Bergen isn't nearly as lucky in her worthless role. Even Hackman isn't all that impressive but there are a few scenes where he's so over-the-top you can't help but laugh. Just check out the scene on the train where he's with a prostitute and decides to use his cigar as a sexual tool. THE HUNTING PARTY lives up to its reputation as being a very bad film and what's really sad is how pointless it all is.